In A24’s X, one of the best (and seediest) horror movies of the year, Mia Goth played two roles: Maxine, an aspiring adult film star, and Pearl, a sexually repressed elderly woman who lives on a farm with her cranky husband. It was a career-best performance from the actress, one that she’ll further explore in the X prequel, Pearl.
Pearl is set decades before the events of X as Pearl discovers her sexuality — and love of murder. “It is very much a story about Pearl. So you will learn more about her,” director Ti West told Bloody Disgusting. “It is stylistically very different from X. You do not need one without the other, but they enrich each other in a specific way. In the way that X is affected, let’s say by 1970s horror independent filmmaking and Americana cinema, Pearl is influenced by a very different era of filmmaking.” There’s also more goose killing.
Here’s more:
Filmmaker Ti West returns with another chapter from the twisted world of X, in this astonishing follow-up to the year’s most acclaimed horror film. Trapped on her family’s isolated farm, Pearl must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother. Lusting for a glamorous life like she’s seen in the movies, Pearl’s ambitions, temptations, and repressions all collide, in the stunning, technicolor-inspired origin story of X’s iconic villain.
Pearl (which is hopefully better than every Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel) opens on September 16.